RCMP Watch

Elizabeth Thompson (Montreal Gazette) - A secret RCMP file on former Quebec Premier Rene Levesque alleges that he suffered from sexual problems and was so drawn to very young women that it left his party at times in an embarrassing situation.

New files obtained by The Montreal Gazette under the Access to Information and Privacy Act reveal that Levesque may have been under even closer scrutiny than many realized.

In a report dated Feb. 9, 1972, for example, Levesque’s sexual proclivities are discussed.

“Levesque could have (aurait) certain problems of a sexual nature,” says the heavily censored report. “He likes skirts. And particularly when they are young. Which at times puts the Party in an embarrassing situation since Levesque, after an interesting encounter, would disappear for a few days.”

The passage is the only one of six paragraphs about Levesque that is not blacked out. The paragraphs immediately before and after it are censored, no source is listed for the statement, and there is no indication how much importance or credence it was given by the report’s author or by the RCMP.

Under civil status, the report lists married, which is then followed by two lines of type that has been censored. Another paragraph begins, “Levesque’s actual address,” but is then blacked out. Elsewhere, the report lists every one of Levesque’s addresses dating back to 1948.

A black bar also appears through part of the force’s description of Levesque’s current employment.

Although the name of the report’s author was also censored, it mentions the officer is with Section G. The activities of Section G, which was charged with spying on Quebec’s sovereignty movement, was sharply criticized by the McDonald Commission in its 1981 report.

At the time the report was written, Levesque was the fledgling sovereigntist party’s leader. A former Liberal party cabinet minister, he was only re-elected to the National Assembly and became premier in 1976.

The shocking new allegation is contained in secret RCMP security and intelligence files on Levesque, sealed for 20 years after his death. The files were so secret, that when the Montreal Gazette initially asked for them in January, Library and Archives Canada refused to confirm or deny their existence.

While the 2,520 pages of files were heavily redacted, what remains sheds new light on how the RCMP monitored the comings and goings of one of Quebec’s top political leaders for most of his adult life.

It also contains tantalizing hints of secrets yet to be revealed such as an entirely blacked out memo from August 1970 from John Starnes, director general of security and intelligence for the RCMP to Marc Lalonde in the then Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau’s office, the privy council office and the undersecretary of state for External Affairs.

Documents show that the RCMP’s interest in Levesque began in the 1940s at the height of the cold war. What exactly triggered that interest in Levesque who was then a CBC reporter is systematically blacked out throughout the files.

While the RCMP’s interest in Levesque may have begun with suspicions he was a communist sympathizer, later on it was his involvement with Quebec’s independence movement that attracted their scrutiny.

The file contains periodic assessments of the state of the sovereigntist movement and the Parti Quebecois as well as regular accounts of PQ conseil national meetings and meetings where Levesque spoke, from sources who appear to have attended the meetings.

Another document indicates that Levesque was concerned about potential trouble makers in the PQ and would have agreed to speak in confidence about it with the RCMP.

An officer named M.J Goguen reported a chance encounter he had with Levesque on July 22, 1978 in a grocery store on St. Catherine St. West in Montreal. Mr. Goguen said Levesque quickly figured out that he was a police officer. Mr. Goguen confirmed that he was not only a police officer but a member of the security service who testified before the McDonald and Keable commissions and one of the initiators of an operation which, in the documents, was blacked out.

“To his question as to why we had carried out that operation, I responded that at that time we had several pieces of data which allowed us to supposed that something was not right in the independence milieu and that at the time, a few young investigators had even discussed the possibility of discussing it with him.”

Mr. Goguen said Levesque asked why they hadn’t spoken to him and he replied it was because they were afraid it would be badly received.

“He responded that we should have because he would have certainly kept the conversation confidential because he knew that there were some trouble makers in the Parti Quebecois and hoped that they weren’t emissaries from Ottawa.”

Even in 1980, when the force’s probing of Quebec’s sovereigntist movement was under the scrutiny of the McDonald Commission, the force found a rationale for continuing to keep an eye on Levesque and keep his file active.

“There is nothing in this file to indicate that Levesque has committed himself to any organization other than the PQ,” says a file review marked Top Secret. “However because of the key position he occupies at this time in Canadian history, we should continue to monitor his activities; the protection of the man could justify it.”